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The Carlyle Group, the alternative asset manager with over $107.6bn under management, paid out the most investment banking fees for the second half-year period running, as buyout firms start to account for an increasing proportion of investment banking fees.

In the first half of 2011, the US firm stumped up $392m of fees for activities across equity capital markets, debt capital markets, M&A and loan transactions globally, having also topped the rankings in the second half of 2010 when it paid out £334m, according to data provider Dealogic.

Carlyle declined to comment.

Carlyle climbed three places on the rankings since the first half of last year when it was the fourth highest fee payer in the first half of 2010. Bain Capital, which paid out $370m in fees in the first half of the year, was the second highest fee payer both in the second half of 2010 and the first half of 2011 globally.

Private equity-related fees totalled $7.4bn globally in the first half of the year, the highest level since the first half of 2007 when they were about $11bn. The buyout-related fees accounted for 18% of the investment banking total fees in the first half of the year, compared with 14% in the same period last year.

JP Morgan captured the largest share of the private equity fee wallet with $743m or 10% of fees paid by buyout firms globally, followed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. JP Morgan was also the top adviser, on $27.4bn worth of deals, followed by Barclays Capital which advised on $24.7bn of deals.

In Europe, Bank of America Merrill Lynch was the top ranked for announced deals, according to Dealogic. HSBC topped the rankings for advisers on announced private equity acquisitions, according to a ranking that the bank compiled using Dealogic data.

Meanwhile, Blackstone Group topped the global private equity buyout league table, measuring the combined value of deals the firm completed in the the first half of the year, having last appeared in Dealogic's top ten league table in the first half of 2010, ranked 5th.

The US alternatives firm’s $9.4bn buyout of the US assets and services business of Australia’s Centro Properties Group - the largest buyout since the fourth quarter of 2009 - brought the total value of deals it completed in the first half of the year to $11.2bn.

By comparison, TPG Capital, which was ranked second, completed $8.2bn worth of deals in the same period. Carlyle Group was third in the list with $8bn worth of deals completed.